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by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 3/24/2010 4:00:00 PM
If you’ve even seen the following error when trying to build a Windows Azure Cloud Service Visual Studio 2010: OutputPath property is not set for project 'CloudService1.ccproj'. Please check to make sure that you have specified a valid combination of Configuration and Platform for this project. Configuration='Debug' Platform='HPD'. The solution is to delete the Platform environment variable that may have been added to your machine as it conflicts with an environment vari ...
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by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 3/24/2010 9:00:00 AM
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 3/23/2010 4:00:00 PM
This is a workaround for the following configuration: Visual Studio 2008 (works fine on VS 2010) Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio February 2010 Release Silverlight 3 Tools for Visual Studio 2008 Building a Silverlight application in a Windows Azure Cloud Service This is the issue reported in this forum thread. To reproduce the issue: 1. Create a new Windows Azure Cloud Service project. (File | New Project) 2. Add a Web Role to the project, this will be the web application for t ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 3/22/2010 4:00:00 PM
One of the main issues you can run into when deploying is that one of your dependent assemblies is not available in the cloud. This will result in your cloud service never hitting the running state, instead it will cycle between the initializing, busy and stopping states. (the other main reason is that a storage account, especially the one included in the default template, is pointing to development storage – see this post about running the app on the devfabric with devstorage turned off ...
The following is a list of the contents of the GAC for Windows Azure Guest OS 1.1 (Release 201001-01) Please see this post: http://blogs.msdn.com/jnak/archive/2010/03/21/viewing-gac-d-assemblies-in-the-windows-azure-os.aspx for a walkthrough of how this listing was obtained and how you can obtain the listing for any Windows Azure OS you choose. Microsoft (R) .NET Global Assembly Cache Utility. Version 3.5.30729.1Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. The Globa ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 3/22/2010 9:00:00 AM
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 3/18/2010 9:00:00 AM
Had a great time at MIX10 this year, talked to a lot of customers and got a lot of great feedback – thank you. If you weren’t able to attend and are interested in Windows Azure, here are links to the Windows Azure sessions. Videos of all of the sessions are available at: http://live.visitmix.com/Videos (some of the sessions will come online toward the end of the day) My session: Building and Deploying Windows Azure based Applications with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. Day 1 Keynote - ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 3/17/2010 1:46:00 PM
My session at Mix ‘10 is now online: http://live.visitmix.com/MIX10/Sessions/SVC09 If you want to get a solid understanding of what a developer needs to know in order to successfully build Windows Azure applications using Visual Studio both in terms of a new application or migrating an existing application (including the use of SQL Azure) this is the session for you. Links, resources and some summary information is available in this post: http://blogs.msdn.com/jnak/archive/2010/03/16/mix-10-bui ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 3/16/2010 8:00:00 PM
Thank you to all of you who attended my session at Mix ‘10 on Building and Deploying Windows Azure-Based Applications with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. The video will be available within the next couple of days. Here are some of the key takeaways and links from the session: Getting Started The Web Platform Installer automates a number of the steps to install the Windows Azure Tools for VS 2008 or to install IIS prior to installing the Windows Azure Tools for VS 2010. Get the patches - htt ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 3/16/2010 1:00:00 PM
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 3/14/2010 9:30:00 PM
I’m really excited about Mix ‘10 this year. There’s going to be a lot of cool announcements and sessions. One of the sessions I’d love to see you at is my session on building Windows Azure applications with Visual Studio (Tuesday right after the keynote at 11:30 in Breakers L): Building and Deploying Windows Azure-Based Applications with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 My goal for the talk is to have you walk away with enough nuts and bolts developer info to feel comfortable opening Vi ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 3/14/2010 2:30:00 PM
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 2/11/2010 5:00:00 PM
I saw an internal discussion that had some information I thought would be useful to share. It’s about how some of the methods in RoleEntryPoint get called. In the case of a Worker Role, the RoleEntryPoint class is the class you derive to write your code. When you create a new Worker Role project in Visual Studio, you’ll see that the project contains one code file and in that code file there is a class called WorkerRole that derives from RoleEntryPoint. Worker Role Call Order: WaWorke ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 2/11/2010 9:00:00 AM
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 2/9/2010 6:26:00 AM
This weekend I had someone email me asking me to blog about where to find the usage info used for billing because they were having a hard time finding it and figured others were having difficulty as well. Coincidentally, I saw an internal thread this morning where someone was asking the very same question so... Erik, I believe you are correct, a post will probably be helpful for folks. To find your usage info, go to: https://mocp.microsoftonline.com (From the Developer Portal, you can click on t ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 2/8/2010 10:26:00 PM
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 2/8/2010 5:00:00 PM
This post has 2 main parts. The first part is an update to a post I wrote back in February 2009 about using an existing ASP.NET Web Application as Web Role and rolls in information from this post and this post. The second part is about migrating an existing database running on SQL Express and ASP.NET providers to SQL Azure. I’ll start with the NerdDinner sample, so make sure you have ASP.NET MVC installed. Although I used VS 2008 for the screen shots, this walkthrough is compat ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 2/8/2010 9:00:00 AM
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 2/5/2010 9:05:00 PM
One of my tenets on this blog is to not do posts that simply point to someone else’s post. I’m breaking that tenant today because of something I just found out that I think is super important for all Windows Azure customers to be clear on and saw that Ryan Dunn had already posted about this. Windows Azure compute time is calculated based on the time that you’ve deployed the app, not the time your app is in the running state. For example, if you put your deployment in the stopped state, you ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 2/5/2010 1:05:00 PM
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 2/2/2010 12:00:00 AM
I’m pleased to announce that the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 1.1 (direct link while the release propagates) has been released to coincide with the general availability of Windows Azure. This release supports VS 2008 and the upcoming VS 2010 RC. For VS 2010 Beta 2 please use the November 2009 release. New for version 1.1: Windows Azure Drive: Enable a Windows Azure application to use existing NTFS APIs to access a durable drive. This allows the Windows Azure applicatio ...
Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio extend Visual Studio to enable the creation, building, configuring, debugging, running and packaging of scalable web applications and services on Windows Azure. The February 2010 release of the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio support the Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and the upcoming Visual Studio 2010 RC. We’re very excited about Visual Studio 2010! The RC, available soon, will support a broad ‘go-live’ license, increased performance and ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 1/29/2010 5:00:00 PM
A little while ago I posted How To: Add an HTTPS Endpoint to a Windows Azure Cloud Service which talked about the whole process around adding an HTTPS endpoint and configuring & uploading the SSL certificate for that endpoint. This post is a follow up to that post to talk about installing any certificate to a Windows Azure VM. You may want to do this to install various client certificates or even to install the intermediate certificates to complete the certificate chain for your SSL ce ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 1/26/2010 5:00:00 PM
One of the things I run into from time to time is the need/desire to match an instance I’m watching in the Development Fabric UI back to its process. This may be because I am sitting on a breakpoint in Visual Studio and want to look at the corresponding logs for that process in the DevFabric UI or because I want to use some non Windows Azure aware tool that requires a process ID. For example, given a Web and a Worker role with 3 instances each, I can watch the instances in the development fabri ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 1/22/2010 5:00:00 PM
Recently, a colleague of mine wrote about the Windows Azure instance limits: http://blog.toddysm.com/2010/01/windows-azure-role-instance-limits-explained.html His post is very complete, I recommend you have a look but here is my take: These are default limits that are in place to ensure that Windows Azure will always have VMs available to all of our customers. If you have a need for more capacity, we want to help! Please contact us: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=123579 The ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 1/21/2010 7:01:00 PM
For those of you that watched my Tips & Tricks session at PDC or followed along on my blog post, you'll recall that I mentioned the following: In general, WCF works correctly on Windows Azure. There is a problem using "add service reference" or svcutil but we have a patch to workaround the problem. The patch is installed in the cloud, and more information about this is here: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/wcfazure/Wiki/View.aspx?title=KnownIssues (note that a web.config chan ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 1/11/2010 6:00:00 PM
Similar to the table storage walkthrough I posted last week, I updated this blog post for the Nov 2009/v1.0 and later release of the Windows Azure Tools. This walkthrough covers what I found to be the simplest way to get a sample up and running on Windows Azure that uses the Blob Storage service. It is not trying to be comprehensive or trying to dive deep in the technology, it just serves as an introduction to how the Windows Azure Blob Storage Service works. Please take the Quick Lap Around the ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 1/9/2010 2:06:00 AM
Good article in Visual Studio Magazine this month on Windows Azure: http://visualstudiomagazine.com/Articles/2010/01/01/App-Dev-from-the-Ground-Up.aspx Ok, I might be a bit biased -- I get a few mentions in the article that I'm pretty jazzed about :) The quotes are from my session at PDC '09. In case you missed it, you can always catch it here: Tips and Tricks for Using Visual Studio 2010 to Build Applications that Run on Windows Azure Kathleen, if you read this, thanks for the quote ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 1/6/2010 6:20:00 PM
This walkthrough covers what I found to be the simplest way to get a sample up and running on Windows Azure that uses the Table Storage Service. It serves as an introduction to both Windows Azure cloud services as well as using table storage. Although there is a wealth of information out there on Windows Azure - I try to tie together a lot of that information for folks of all levels to consume. I originally wrote this walkthrough well over a year ago for our very first public release of Wi ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 12/1/2009 8:50:00 PM
Back in May I posted about Adding an HTTPS Endpoint to a Windows Azure Cloud Service and with the November 2009 release of the Windows Azure Tools, that article is now obsolete. In the last week I received a number of requests to post a new article about how to add HTTPS endpoints with the November 2009 release and later and I’m always happy to oblige! To illustrate how to add an HTTPS endpoint to a Cloud Service, I’ll start with the thumbnail sample from the Windows Azure SDK – the web role in ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 11/30/2009 7:00:00 PM
Currently (November 2009), the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio only support Web Application projects – the type of Web projects that have a project file and are compiled. For most folks, they reason to choose a Web Site project was for the ability to update it easily on the server and generally, the target customer for Windows Azure is typically using a Web Application project. (for a good article about the differences and when to use each one, please see this post) Because Windows Azure h ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 11/24/2009 8:07:00 PM
[Changing title to be more clear] Mike Wickstrand, the director of Windows Azure product planning has put together a site where you can post and vote for Windows Azure ideas: http://www.mygreatwindowsazureidea.com The idea came from the success we had with the Silverlight feature suggestions page and we hope to duplicate that success. Please take the time to go to http://www.mygreatwindowsazureidea.com/ today submit your ideas and your votes - and don't forget about the areas that are my pa ...
Mike Wickstrand, the director of Windows Azure product planning has put together a site where you can post and vote for Windows Azure ideas: http://www.mygreatwindowsazureidea.com The idea came from the success we had with the Silverlight feature suggestions page and we hope to duplicate that success. Please take the time to go to http://www.mygreatwindowsazureidea.com/ today submit your ideas and your votes - and don't forget about the areas that are my passion - the developer experiences ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 11/24/2009 7:45:00 PM
If you want to use the ASP.NET Providers (membership, role, personalization, profile, web event provider) with SQL Azure, you'll need to use the the following scripts or aspnet-regAzure.exe tool to setup the database: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/2006191 Currently the only provider which is not supported on SQL Azure is the session state provider. Personally, I like using SSMS 2008 R2 to connect to SQL Azure and using the Query window to run the scripts. (if you already have ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 11/19/2009 8:11:00 PM
Here are the videos of the Windows Azure sessions at PDC09. Lots of useful content, the sessions were well attended and well received. At the time of this writing, some of the videos are not yet posted but they will be by the end of the week. Enjoy. Windows Azure Sessions My session -- Tips and Tricks for Using Visual Studio 2010 to Build Applications that Run on Windows Azure Introductory Lap Around the Windows Azure Platform Windows Azure Present and Future Introduction to Building Appl ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 11/19/2009 6:00:00 PM
With the November release of the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio, we’ve done some things in Visual Studio 2010 to make it easier to use ASP.NET MVC and Windows Azure together. Note: In the November release of the Tools + SDK, Windows Azure only supports .NET 3.5 SP1, .NET 4.0 projects are not supported. Creating a New Project The first thing you’ll notice in Visual Studio 2010 is that we now have a project template option for an ASP.NET MVC 2 Web Role. (Click on File ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 11/19/2009 5:00:00 PM
Previously, the sample Windows Azure ASP.NET providers were included in the samples folder that was installed with the SDK. As of the November 2009 release of the Windows Azure Tools & SDK, this is no longer the case. The samples are available online at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsazuresamples. To use these samples: 1. Download the samples and unzip (These are no longer included as part of the samples installed to the SDK folder) 2. Add the AspProviders/Lib/AspProviders.cspro ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 11/18/2009 11:00:00 PM
Thanks to everyone who attended my session at PDC today. I really hope that you took something useful away from it. As mentioned in the session, I’m posting the set of tips that were covered. You can now view the session online at: http://microsoftpdc.com/Sessions/SVC53 If you missed my session, I went through a "green field" new Windows Azure Cloud Service project developer scenario as well as a "brown field" moving an existing ASP.NET web application to run on Windows Azure develo ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 11/18/2009 6:00:00 PM
One of the features we added to the November 2009 release of the Windows Azure Tools are tools to configure the Service Definition and Service Configuration files – yes, no more XML editing! To access the “Service Model Configuration Pages”, right click on the role under the Cloud Service “Roles” node in Solution Explorer and select “Properties”. (you can also double click the role) This will bring up our UI over the definition and configuration files: Here are a few more screen shots. Setti ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 11/17/2009 7:00:00 PM
Straight from the halls of Microsoft - a 3 video series on building Windows Azure applications using Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2. The videos showcase the Windows Azure Tools. The goal was to focus on the developer experiences and to keep the videos relatively short (around 10 minutes each) so that they are easily consumed. Part 1 - Creating a new Windows Azure Cloud Service This video covers the getting started and creating your first Windows Azure Cloud Service project in Visual Studi ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 11/12/2009 5:46:00 PM
We just released a tool to help you figure out how much money you can save by switching to Windows Azure. It’s quite comprehensive and I’m sure will be quite useful for a lot folks. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/tco/ To give you a really rough idea of what this looks like: ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 11/10/2009 7:05:00 PM
For those of you that will be attending PDC, I wanted to let you know about a session I’ll be doing on using Visual Studio 2010 to develop applications that run on Windows Azure. The session will share a number of tips and tricks and show some cool new tools in Visual Studio for Windows Azure and SQL Azure. The tips and tricks will be presented in the context of 2 walkthroughs: Creating a new cloud service application Migrating an existing ASP.NET Web Application to Windows Azure and SQL Azure ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 11/7/2009 1:51:00 AM
In case you missed this on the Windows Azure blog, there were a couple of neat announcements around new storage features: Content Delivery Network: http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsazure/archive/2009/11/05/introducing-the-windows-azure-content-delivery-network.aspx Windows Azure CDN has 18 locations globally (United States, Europe, Asia, Australia and South America) and continues to expand. Windows Azure CDN caches your Windows Azure blobs at strategically placed locations to provide maximum bandwi ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 10/27/2009 5:00:00 PM
Here’s a fun little thing I found out about recently. Suppose, I have a Cloud Service that I’m running on the devfabric and I want to simulate a configuration change. I’ll start by creating a cloud service with a single web role: Opening the service configuration file, I can see that the instance count is set to 1.<Role name="WebRole1"> <Instances count="1" /> </Role> I hit F5 and my service has 1 instance of the web role running on the devfabric: Note that t ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 10/27/2009 3:00:00 AM
Recently, I updated a somewhat out of context (for this blog) post titled "Windows Azure Tools and Visual Studio 2010”. One of the things you’ll notice is that we let the cat out of the bag that we’ll be releasing something new and big in November! (ok, maybe not a big surprise given that PDC 2009 is in November as well) It’s one of the reasons my blog has been quieter than usual over the last months, there’s a lot of stuff coming and I’ll have a lot of posts in November and ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 10/19/2009 2:55:00 AM
Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio extend Visual Studio to enable the creation, building, configuring, debugging, running and packaging of scalable web applications and services on Windows Azure. Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 – Coming Soon! We’re putting the final touches on our upcoming November release of the Windows Azure Tools, SDK and cloud which will support Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2. ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 9/25/2009 2:48:10 AM
Today, the IIS team released a the Web Platform Installer 2.0 RTW. Among the many cool new things (more tools, new applications, and localization to 9 languages) is the inclusion of the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. Install the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 using the Web Platform Installer. Why should you care? As many of you know, before using the Windows Azure Tools, you need install and configure IIS which requires figuring out ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 9/24/2009 6:26:00 AM
Today, the WCF team released a patch that will help you if your are using WCF on Windows Azure. Essentially, if you use the "Add Service Reference..." feature in Visual Studio or svutil to generate WSDL for a service that is hosted on Windows Azure either locally or in the cloud, the WSDL would contain incorrect URIs. The problem has to do with the fact that in a load balanced scenario like Windows Azure, there are ports that are used internally (behind the load balancer) and ports ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 8/17/2009 7:50:00 PM
In the July 2009 CTP of the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio, we introduced a bug where if you use the App.Config file in a Worker Role, it won’t get included in your Service Package both when running on the local Development Fabric or in the Cloud. To resolve this issue, simply add the following environment variable before starting Visual Studio: AddAppConfigToBuildOutputs=true This will be fixed in our next release, in fact it’s fixed in our daily builds already. What happened? ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 8/8/2009 3:19:00 AM
The May and July 2009 CTPs of the Windows Azure Tools both support Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1. As far as support for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 -- we won't have a release of Windows Azure Tools that supports Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 until around the time that Beta 2 officially ships publicly. Stay tuned. ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 7/20/2009 11:32:00 PM
If you’ve been following along, you’ll remember my post about using an existing ASP.NET Web Application as a Web Role. We’re now a little smarter in the tools and can allow you to associate any ASP.NET Web Application in the Cloud Service as a Web Role. For example, I can create a Cloud Service with just a Worker role, right click on the Solution in Solution Explorer and select Add | New Project and select an ASP.NET Web Application from the Web folder. This could be *any* ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 7/20/2009 11:31:00 PM
After you install the July 2009 CTP and create a new project via File | New Project | Cloud Service, you now have a single template “Cloud Service” instead of the 4 you had in the past. Clicking on that brings up our new project creation dialog. There are a couple of reasons we have this dialog: In the past, we only allowed you to have 0 or 1 Web Roles and 0 or 1 Worker roles in your Cloud Service. Now you can have 0 to N of either type. We want to help you create the Servi ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 7/12/2009 2:24:00 AM
Many of you may not even know this, but as part of the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio, we ship a Role template called “CGI Web Role”. Today, it’s a little hard to find (yes, I’m foreshadowing that this is about to change!) as you have to create a Cloud Service project first, then add/replace the Web Role with a CGI Web Role. For example you could create a Blank Cloud Service project: In Solution Explorer, right click on the Roles node in the Cloud Service project Add | New Web ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 6/23/2009 1:56:00 AM
[Update, voting for US entries has now concluded - opening for the international winner will open soon] Go to http://www.newcloudapp.com/vote.html to browse the apps and vote for a winner of the Azure Services Platform Developer Challenge. Voting ends June 29th for the US winner. (voting will open July 10th (submission deadline of July 9) for the international winner). Lots of cool apps there, definitely worth a look -- all running on Windows Azure. ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 5/28/2009 8:00:00 PM
Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio (includes SDK). If the release is still propagating, try the Direct Link New for the May 2009 CTP: Support for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 Update for Visual Studio 2008 Improved integration with the Development Fabric and Storage services to improve the reliability of debug and run of Cloud Services from Visual Studio Enhanced robustness and stability Release notes/Known issues are available here Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 Support: You can ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 5/12/2009 11:00:00 PM
Lately there has been a couple of threads on the forum and some internal email around setting up an https endpoint on a Windows Azure Cloud Service. A good starting point is this article, but there are some common issues that people run into that I wanted to talk about. First are the cert requirements. The certificate must contain a private key that is marked exportable The certificate must have the Server Authentication Intended Purpose When running on the Development Fabric, the certif ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 5/5/2009 10:14:00 AM
Azure Services Platform Developer Challenge! Everything you need to know from a page hosted on Windows Azure: http://www.newcloudapp.com/ Couple things to point out: There are 3 categories .Net Applications ($5000 prize), PHP Applications ($5000 prize) and a Community Winner ($2500 prize) Submission dealine is June 18, 2009 More info here and here Pretty cool contest, can't wait to see the kinds of apps that get built -- Start your engines! ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 4/30/2009 8:51:00 PM
Back at Mix ‘09, we announced that Windows Azure will have support for specifying which geographical region you want your Cloud Service to run. If you now go to create a new Hosted Service on the Azure Services Developer Portal, you will be presented with an option to put the service in an Affinity Group and select the region for that Affinity Group. You will then see the Affinity Group listed on the summary page for your Hosted Service Project. When you go to create another project, be it a H ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 4/21/2009 3:17:00 AM
(Update 9/24/2009 -- We're now included in the Web Platform Installer! See: http://blogs.msdn.com/jnak/archive/2009/09/24/installing-the-windows-azure-tools-using-the-web-platform-installer.aspx) One of the first things I do when I get a new box is install the Windows Azure Tools and SDK. (don’t you?) Quite often, I forget to install and configure IIS7 – and receive the following message: The Windows Azure SDK requires Internet Information Service 7.0 with ASP.Net Application Devel ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 4/17/2009 12:43:00 AM
What is the Service Package? It is what contains the Service Definition for your Cloud Service along with the content and binaries for each of the roles. It comes in 2 flavors. The first being a folder structure with the extension csx. For example if you look in the output folder of the Cloud Service project (bin\debug or bin\release) you will see the following: Where the highlighted CloudService6.csx file is the folder structure version of the Service Package – the Service D ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 3/22/2009 8:13:00 PM
If you weren't able to make it to MIX09, you can catch videos of the sessions. My session is available for watching here: Using the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio to Build Cloud Services If you haven't seen the keynotes, I highly recommend that you see them, lots of awesome announcements and they are pretty darn entertaining too. Day 1 Keynote Day 2 Keynote (should be up soon) You can also catch the other Azure related sessions. Here's the list of Windows Azure sessions: Usi ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 3/18/2009 4:30:00 PM
One of the cool new features in the Windows Azure Mix 09 CTP is the ability to run your Web and/or Worker Roles in full trust (non-admin). This opens up all kinds of features that weren’t available in the previous CTPs. An interesting feature, which is the subject of this post is the ability to make PInvoke calls. One of the things I have noticed in playing with calling native code is that you have to be more aware of the actual environment in the cloud. For example, Windows Azure in ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 3/18/2009 4:10:00 PM
New release of the Windows Azure SDK and Tools! From now on, you only have to download the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio and the SDK will be installed as part of that package. Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio (please give time for propagation or use the direct link to the download) In a nutshell, you can now run managed code Full Trust and if you want to give fastCGI applications on Windows Azure a try, you can do that too! Please install the following hotf ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 3/9/2009 3:39:00 AM
ASP.Net MVC RC2 released a few days back and I've already gotten a number of requests to update the MVC on Windows Azure samples since they were getting a little stale. I updated my posts on MVC and I also added more detail to the original "MVC on Windows Azure" post by making it a walkthrough -- hopefully it will be easy for you to duplicate the steps on your projects. Also note that we've released a hotfix that will solve stability issues when using MVC with the Windows Azure Tools. Visu ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 3/5/2009 4:56:00 AM
For those of you who are attending Mix '09, it'd be great if you could come check out my tools talk on Windows Azure: https://content.visitmix.com/2009/Speakers/ (click on "Azure") MIX09-T81M Using the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio to Build Cloud ServicesFriday March 20 |9:25 AM-9:45 AM | San Polo 3401By: Jim Nakashima Tags: ASP.NET | Azure Come hear how to use the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio to more easily create, build, debug, deploy, run and package ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 2/26/2009 10:55:00 PM
For those of you that have been unfortunate enough to experience the VS crash when using the ASP.Net MVC RC in a Windows Azure Cloud Service project, I have good news! The CLR team has distributed a hotfix. The KB Article number is 963676 however at the time of this writing, the article is not posted at http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=963676 -- although this will be the final destination. The hotfix isn't specific to the MVC crash, it solves some crashes in the WPF Designer as well. You ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 2/16/2009 12:18:00 AM
I've received some comments as well as have been contacted by a couple of customers about an issue they have been seeing when using the MVC RC in a Windows Azure Cloud Service project in Visual Studio. That is, when you are using the project/following the steps from this post or this post. The problem is that Visual Studio crashes with a CLR fail fast when doing an operation such as opening or creating a new view using the MVC tools. We gave a repro to the CLR team and they indicated that the cr ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 2/13/2009 10:46:00 PM
We recently deployed a new version of the Azure Services Development Portal. For those of you who have been having intermittent problems with the Portal, those problems should now be gone. That said, to me one of the neatest things that has now been enabled is the ability to deploy a Service Package stored in Windows Azure blob storage. If you have a large Service Package, you’ll really enjoy the fact that deployment from the Cloud is much faster than uploading from your local store ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 2/12/2009 11:26:00 PM
We just released 9 of 40 "How Do I" videos on using the Azure Services Platform - right now the videos target Windows Azure, .Net Services, and Live Services. There are 5 videos related to Windows Azure: Get Started Developing on Windows Azure Deploy a Windows Azure Application Store Blobs in Windows Azure Storage Leverage Queues in Windows Azure Debugging Tips for Windows Azure Applications I still recommend my Quick Lap Around the Tools video walkthrough for the Getting Started video t ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 2/7/2009 12:47:00 AM
The Azure Services Evangelism team just released an update to the Azure Services Training Kit. This training kit was born out of the hands on labs at PDC '08 and is a useful way to ramp up on the Azure Services Platform. The Azure Services Training Kit February update now includes the following content covering Windows Azure, .NET Services, SQL Services, and Live Services: 13 hands-on labs – including 3 new hands-on labs for the Live Framework & Services 19 new demo scripts – These de ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 2/5/2009 11:00:00 PM
One of the things which I’ve kind of covered with my MVC posts here and here is the steps for taking an existing ASP.Net Web Application project and getting it to run on Windows Azure as the Web Role. Based on some of the forum questions I’ve seen, I figured this could use a post on its own. I’ll start this off by making a new ASP.Net Web Application – note that there is currently a limitation in that only Web Applications (and not Web Sites) can be associated as Web Roles in the Windows Azure ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 1/28/2009 5:00:00 PM
When using the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio, there are two times that you end up creating a Windows Azure Service Package: When you build and run on the Development Fabric -- this is a folder based package, extension is csx. This is used by the Development Fabric. When you use the "Publish" feature -- this creates a .cspkg file which is a zipped and encrypted version of the csx built in (1). This is what you upload to the Cloud. This post explains how this process works so ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 1/17/2009 3:12:00 AM
As part of the announcement of the January 2009 CTP of the Windows Azure Tools was "Added support to debug Silverlight in a Web Role". I'll go into more detail about that in this post in 2 ways: Adding Silverlight to a Web Role Configuring the Silverlight debugger Note: Developing Silverlight applications in Visual Studio requires Silverlight Tools. Adding Silverlight to a Web Role In order to add Silverlight to a Web, you first need to create a Cloud Service that contains a Web Role.&nbs ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 1/15/2009 12:36:00 AM
We're excited to announce that we've released an update to the Windows Azure Tools and SDK. Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio Windows Azure SDK What's new in the Tools? Addressed top customer bugs. Resolved hang and performance issues on run and debug. Fixed issue with "Publish" of large projects. Fixed issue with "Create Test Tables" when both the web and worker role reference the same assembly Added support to debug Silverlight in a Web Role. Better storage services integratio ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 12/17/2008 11:33:10 PM
Albert Pascual just posted an interesting article on his experience using Windows Azure. A good read. One thing that stuck out to me was his point about how if you have a reference to an assembly that in turn references other assemblies that are not being pulled in directly to the web role -- those aren't going to be packaged for deployment. He even mentions a workaround, which is to directly reference those assemblies and set copy local to true. This is something we're going to have ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 12/11/2008 2:25:00 AM
In the PDC '08 release of the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio, when you create a new Cloud Service project, that project will contain associations to 0 or 1 web roles and 0 or 1 worker roles. It will also include a single Service Definition and single Service Configuration files. You'll notice that you can't add additional definition or configuration files to the project either. This effectively means that you can only have one configuration of your roles and one set o ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 12/5/2008 6:26:00 PM
I've updated the walkthrough I wrote on Deploying a Cloud Service on MSDN based on some feedback. Hopefully it provides more clarity into when you should use the various endpoints (cloudservice.table.core.windows.net versus table.core.windows.net for example) and is a little more concise on some of the terminology. It's a quick and useful read for when you first try deploying your Cloud Service to Windows Azure, it'll save you a lot of time and pain. ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 12/3/2008 7:25:00 PM
A coworker of mine, Steve Marx, recently posted about creating tables only once due to the performance hit you take when you go to create tables that already exist. This is a good thing to know and I decided to update my Simple Table Storage sample to follow the pattern that our Personal Web SIte SDK sample uses where on the first request, I create the tables. (same solution as Steve described). I actually went back and forth a bit because the goal of the Simple Table Storage sample is to introd ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 11/14/2008 7:33:00 PM
Update: This has been fixed in the January 2009 CTP of the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio Shan McArthur who's been raising a lot of great issues and giving a lot of great feedback on the Windows Azure forum has recently blogged about an issue when using the "Publish" functionality in Visual Studio. Hani did some research and found that in our use of types in the System.IO.Packaging namespace, there is a point in which the code switches to using IsolatedStorage (most likely ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 11/13/2008 1:11:00 AM
Right on the heels of my post on how to use the CloudDrive sample to access the logs for your service running on Windows Azure, John Spurlock posted a link to SpaceBlock on the Windows Azure forum that now supports Windows Azure Blob Storage. This is really cool and actually a much easier way to access logs, just type in your service name and primary access key and away you go: Just makes it really easy to view and transfer to and from your blob storage account. I hope we'll see local h ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 11/12/2008 6:00:00 PM
On Windows Azure, you can output trace messages when your Roles are running "in the cloud". You write the messages by calling the RoleManager.WriteToLog() API in Microsoft.ServiceHosting.ServiceRuntime. This post will cover how to: Copy the logs for your service running on Windows Azure to a blob storage container using the Azure Services Developer Portal Build and install the CloudDrive sample from the Windows Azure SDK Use the CloudDrive sample to access your Blob Stor ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 11/10/2008 11:10:00 PM
Were you wondering why the sample project I got from Phil attached to my post, ASP.Net MVC on Windows Azure, didn't include the sample Windows Azure ASP.Net providers? The answer is that we wanted to get something out early that would unblock folks from trying out the MVC on Windows Azure scenario. That sample solution accomplished that. We were also working out a problem we were seeing when using those providers with MVC. The problem was that we would get a timeout after logging in ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 11/7/2008 9:00:00 PM
A question that I got at PDC was whether or not you could read an XML file contained in your Web Role when running on Windows Azure as some folks use this for metadata such as a site map. The short answer is "yes", just as you would any ASP.Net Web Application (using MapPath to get at the file). As an example, you could use a DataSet to read an XML file you have in the App_Data folder:DataSet games = new DataSet(); games.ReadXml(MapPath("App_Data/VideoGames.xml")); gameView.DataSource = g ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 11/6/2008 3:19:00 AM
There are two things that I want to show in this post: That you can use Silverlight in a Windows Azure Cloud Service That you can stream a movie progressively via http (more about that here) from Windows Azure Blob storage The code is attached to this blog post. Note that you will have to add and reference the Common and StorageClient projects that come as samples in the Windows Azure SDK. What I did, is start with my Simple Blob Storage Walkthrough and adapted it to be a Video Store ins ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 11/5/2008 9:30:00 PM
If you're using the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio and you are finding that when you hit F5 or Ctrl+F5 you are getting the ASP.Net Development server: Instead of the Development Fabric and Development Storage services: You need to make sure that the startup project in Visual Studio is set to the ccproj that was added when you created a Cloud Service. Notice below how the CloudService22 project is bold, which indicates that it is the startup project. You can set the ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 11/1/2008 5:56:00 PM
On this thread in the forum Frank Siegemund posted some great guidelines on how to diagnose and resolve issues related to using the development storage services on Windows Azure. I had a quick chat with Frank and asked him if I could repost that info in blog format. Here it is, very useful: Let me provide some general guidelines on how to diagnose and resolve issues when using the development storage services. The assumption is that you are using the StorageClient sample library fro ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 11/1/2008 5:06:00 PM
Recently I posted about the Windows Live Tools Web Role Template that integrates with the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio as well as the ASP.Net MVC sample that helps you to get started with an ASP.Net MVC app you want to run on Windows Azure. Today I want to point out that Luke from the F# team has put together a set of F# templates that enable you to build an F# Worker Role. He posted about them here and you can download them here. ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 10/31/2008 6:14:00 PM
In my prior post that talked about the difference between the Cloud Service templates and the Role templates I mentioned that out of the box, we only supported one kind of Web Role -- an ASP.Net Web Application. (that is, if you used the Roles node in the Cloud Service (ccproj) project to add or replace a Web Role, you only got the option to add an ASP.Net Web Application. The cool thing is that we made the role templates extensible so other teams can add in Windows Azure versions of their ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 10/29/2008 9:56:00 PM
The Azure Services Training Kit - PDC Preview which contains the Hands on Labs that folks are doing at the PDC is now available for download. From the download page: The Azure Services Training Kit will include a comprehensive set of technical content including samples, demos, hands-on labs, and presentations that are designed to help you learn how to use the Azure Services Platform. This initial PDC Preview release includes the hands-on labs that were provided at the PDC 2008 conference. T ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 10/29/2008 7:00:00 PM
This walkthrough covers what I found to be the simplest way to get a sample up and running on Windows Azure that uses the Blob Storage service. It is not trying to be comprehensive or trying to dive deep in the technology, it just serves as an introduction to how the Windows Azure Blob Storage Service works. Please take the Quick Lap Around the Tools before doing this walkthrough. Note: The code for this walkthrough is attached, you will still have to add and reference the Common and StorageClie ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 10/29/2008 4:59:00 AM
Strictly speaking, ASP.Net MVC projects are not supported on Windows Azure. That is to say that we haven't spent the time to fully test all of the MVC scenarios when running on Windows Azure. That said, for the most part, they do work, just as long as you know what tweaks you need to make in order to get up and running. I've attached a sample application that Phil and Eilon on the MVC team put together to help make it easier for you to get started. If you don't use the sample, you w ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 10/28/2008 10:58:00 PM
Watch my screencast that introduces you to the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio. http://wm.microsoft.com/ms/msdn/azure/visualstudioazure.wmv ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 10/28/2008 7:01:00 PM
This walkthrough covers what I found to be the simplest way to get a sample up and running on Windows Azure that uses the Table Storage Service. It is not trying to be comprehensive or trying to dive deep in the technology, it just serves as an introduction to how the Table Storage Service works. Please take the Quick Lap Around the Tools before doing this walkthrough. Note: The code for this walkthrough is attached, you will still have to add and reference the Common and StorageClient projects ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 10/28/2008 6:47:00 AM
If you have questions you want to have answered, or want to participate in community discussions, the Windows Azure Forum is a great place to go. If you've found a bug or have a suggestion, submitting a bug/suggestion directly to our product team is a great way to help us identify the issues that exist and to help us build a better product. Reporting a bug also allows you to track the progress of the issue, which is harder to do if we open a bug report for you in our internal syste ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 10/27/2008 6:55:00 PM
I've posted a number of technical articles on MSDN that will help you to get acquainted with the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio. Have a look: Introduction Quick Lap around the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio Using the Cloud Service Project Roles Node Windows Azure Tools Development Fabric and Storage Integration Deploying a Service (Interesting for folks who don't have a token yet but want to see the experience) Deploying a Service on Windows Azure Cr ...
by jnak via Cloudy in Seattle on 10/27/2008 5:02:00 PM
If you create a new Cloud Service project in Visual Studio but it doesn't contain a Cloud Service project (ccproj), you won't get the Visual Studio integration for building Windows Azure services that you would expect. For example, you won't get debug/run in the Development Fabric, you won't get integration with the Development Storage service, and you won't get publishing support. The reason is that you have created a Role project, instead of a Cloud Service Project. Today, you can have 0 ...
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